PA Democrat John Fetterman Embraced Spelling of Braddock that Showed Fidelity to Notorious Crip Gang

Pennsylvania’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, embraced a spelling of Braddock, Pennsylvania, during his first mayoral run that “acknowledge[d] an allegiance that many of the younger residents there have with the Crips gang,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette previously reported.

In a 2006 article authored by former Post-Gazette reporter Ann Belsar, which the Washington Free Beacon recently unearthed, then-Braddock Mayor John Fetterman contended that two versions of the town existed. The traditional spelling of Braddock ending in “CK” referenced the older generation of citizens, who experienced the once-bustling and prosperous locale.

“It’s those younger people who belong to the other Braddock, the one Mr. Fetterman refers to as “B-R-A-D-D-O-C-C”, or the “O-C-C,” wrote Belsar. “That is the underground spelling for the borough, which, he said, acknowledges an allegiance that many of the younger residents there have with the Crips gang.”

In a 2015 blog published in Medium.com by Dustin Slaughter, Fetterman, who served as mayor from 2006-2019, admitted that he took on both spelling variations for campaign slogans. Fetterman explained that since “CK” is a street “reference to ‘Crip killer'” adding that “they turned the ‘k’ into a ‘c.'” As the New York Post reported in 2007, “Crip killer” is a phrase used by the Bloods, another national gang that rivals the Crips. According to Brad Hamilton, who authored the Post article, Bloods often deliberately wear Calvin Klein jeans as a tribute to the “CK” or “Crip killer” phrases.

Fetterman explained:

So during my campaign, I [used] “Vote John Mayor of Braddocc” and “Vote John Mayor of Braddock” the way it’s traditionally spelled, and the reason why I did that is because there are two Braddocks, and you have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that here’s the Braddock that only young people know, the Braddock of despair and decline, and they grew up in an era when they never knew there were 14 furniture stores and three movie theaters. And I caught some flak for that because some people thought I was spelling it like a gangster. No, there are two Braddocks. And we need to bring them together and agree on the way to move forward, so that’s why I spelled that the way I did. Because ultimately I carry their flag, because they’re the ones that made the difference that I won by one vote that first election.

In 2006, he launched a website called braddocc.com, which is no longer in service. The website was designed to entice artists and gallery owners to move to the city, Belsar noted. Fetterman’s vision to inject art into the town materialized. The Unsmoke Systems Art Space, which, according to its website, was a project of Fetterman-founded Braddock Redux nonprofit, opened in 2008. As the Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross previously noted, the gallery held an “I Am Palestine” exhibit in 2012. It featured “a so-called apartheid wall that condemns the 440-mile Israeli-built barrier separating Israel from the West Bank following a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings launched from the territory that left roughly 700 Israeli civilians dead.”

His campaign expressed to the outlet that he “is and always has been a pro-Israel Democrat.”

Fetterman has touted that Braddock “went five and a half years in town without a homicide” and has asserted that his mayorship was “very successful in reducing, in driving crime down substantially.” However, during Fetterman’s tenure, violent crime surged between 2013 and 2018 and peaked in 2017, as Breitbart News’s John Binder reported, citing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics.